


Parallel Lives, and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves to Avoid Complete and Total Crisis

by lesbianferrissbueller



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Continuity What Continuity, Divorce, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I gave Oliver a last name, I gave his sons names and personalities and added a child for reasons, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, Isolation, Kinda, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Oliver's children Need an Adult, Pining, Semi-Canonical Character, Separations, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, but not really this would never happen, elio and marzia are best friends, its Blumberg, marzia gets a lot of frantic gay phone calls, maybe a bit more than implied, namesake, nothing explicit or instructional though, they chose Elio and he has no idea what he's doing but he's trying his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-03-20 05:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18986239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianferrissbueller/pseuds/lesbianferrissbueller
Summary: Twenty years after summer, 1987, Elio receives troubling news just as he is about to return to Europe for good. Oliver, in the process of getting divorced, has attempted suicide, leaving his children in desperate need of an adult. Micheal, the oldest, reaches out to perhaps the only remaining adult who can help in the situation, Elio himself.-Idk if I will ever finish this but I thought it was a good idea and eventually I just want them to have a slow burn reunited happy ending. Low-key? Fuck Andre Aciman he can suck my dick also he's a very talented writer but WE DESERVE HAPPY ENDINGS





	1. You've Got Mail!

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y’all it's me. My girlfriend had me read Call Me by Your Name and the ending was so much I want it to be less sad so here you go. Like stop making the gays sad because we’re gay. Gay means happy. And in the movie like, you can just think of it as a learning experience but in the book they n e v e r get over it. I love this book, but like, Andre Aciman get it together. Also! I can't speak a lick of Italian or french or anything only like spanglish so big yeet pls enjoy my language avoidant cop outs. Also apparently Massachusetts was the first state in the union to legalize gay marriage way back in ‘04? Wildin. I bet it's all that lesbian witch magic in Salem, MA.  
> All my love,  
> Gogo

12/14/07

 

_ Dear Mr. Perlman, _

_ My name is Michael, and I believe that you may have known my father, Oliver, in your youth. If you do not recall, and I have contacted the wrong person, please disregard the following letter. If this is you, however, please respond so that I may know I at least found the correct Elio Perlman. Our family is in the process of recovering from a crisis, and I think you may be able to help. I would very much like to meet with you to discuss the situation further, at some point this week. This may seem unexpected, but our family has run out of options for assistance, so please let me know if you are at all available. It is also very understandable, given the circumstances, if you do not wish to be involved. _

_ Very sincerely,  _

_ Michael Blumberg _

 

12/16/07

 

_ Mr. Blumberg, _

_ I am indeed the Elio Perlman to which you are referring. I must admit, I was rather surprised to receive a letter from any member of your father's family. If your family does indeed find itself in crisis, I am available to meet for coffee this coming Thursday. Let me know of any location in the Cape Cod area that suits you. _

_ Regards, _

_ Elio Perlman, PhD _

 

I debated for almost a week on whether or not to respond to the email. At first I thought I should at least give this young man some peace of mind. Tell him that he had found me, but that I wasn't available. But I was very, very available. I was always available for Oliver. Even when I didn't want to be. I made up my mind to respond saying I had time, he’d caught me three weeks before I was scheduled to leave for Italy, almost everything out of my apartment in Cape Cod and in the mail or in trunk of my car, ready to fly home and stay home for quite a while. My mother needed me there, too, which she would never say, but she did. She was too old and the house too empty. I would say I saw no harm in indulging it one last time, but so much harm could be done. 

I had never met either of Oliver’s two presumably perfect jock-esque sons, but whatever guesses I had made we dashed to pieces by the scrawny young man in glasses that now sat across from me clearing his throat and folding his hands on the table. He looked to be a die hard intellectual. I remembered this was likely the one the older one that reminded him of me. This seemed only a slight jab, as his Michael held such composure it could be a double sided coin. 

“Thank you so much for coming, Dr. Perlman.” Oliver’s-first-born-son-Michael stood up to extend a hand to me. He was just as blonde. Nothing else seemed to draw direct lines. His eyes were a different color, his frame smaller, but he looked younger than I had ever known Oliver to be. Barely twenty.

“You must be Michael.” I shook it, noting how unprepared this young man seemed, despite trying to keep it all straight edges. 

We sat down to coffee. 

“I’m so glad you got my email.” He said. “I hope, um, I hope everything is going well for you, today.”

“It is.”

“I thought maybe you'd like a bit more of an explanation as to why I asked you here.”

“I would.”

“We’ve had a bit of a family crisis.”

“So I heard.”

“My dad, he’s not in a good place right now, Dr-”

“Elio is fine.”

“Elio,” Michael repeated uncertainty. “My father’s not in a good place and he needs- he needs someone. To see him. To talk to. Just someone to go and just try to get him to open up. You were kind of our last hope.”

“I think maybe you've misinterpreted whatever it is you know about me, young man. This seems far more personal, whatever it is, than I am equipped to deal with. I’m sure whatever trouble your father is in, one of his other friends can help him with it.”

“He doesn’t have any other friends right now, sir. Not one’s close enough to help.”

“And why is that?”

“He-” Michael stopped, cleared his throat. “He tried to commit suicide a few weeks ago, sir.”

I felt some pang of something I hadn't known I had left in me. Some great sympathy. Something that had me leaning forward in my seat, brows furrowed, suddenly concerned. 

“He what?”

“We found- well, my mother- well, it's hard to explain. He’s not in a good place and he’s on unpaid leave from his position as professor - he said you knew about his work - and our mother is in New York, and none of his friends have returned my calls. If you could possibly  _ help _ in some way. Come by the house and just talk to him for a bit or something. I’m sure it would help at least a little.”

Inexplicably, I felt betrayed. I recalled some promise about deathbeds long ago and felt a pang that Oliver hadn’t thought to say his goodbyes to me. I wondered if he said a failed goodbye to anyone, and of course not me. Why would he ever think about me more than he absolutely needed to?

I found myself needing to clear my throat as well. “When?”

“Anytime,” Michael looked surprised, hopeful. “Anytime at all. Just, uh, just shoot me a text. It’s winter break for me and none of us have anything to really do, I-”

“I’ll consider it.” I was already pulling out my wallet to pay for coffee and leave as soon as possible. 

“Oh, thank- Thank you, sir.” Michael stood, extending a hand for me to shake. Hesitantly, I took it, and left before I could from any thought at all. 

Even in the years and years and  _ years _ of nothing and no one and no contact, still would I go so far for this? For him? 

Michael’s phone number burned a hole in my inbox for a day. 

Weak or reckless. 

Go, don’t go.

I never thought the trip wire would stay so tightly strung. 


	2. War Memorial

I knew vaguely where Oliver lived, even before I texted Michael -finally -for the address, but had never actually heard the crunch of the gravel in his driveway, looked up at the white washed walls and french windows. The rain was lighter when we got out of the car. Everything around seemed the american version of things he had liked from my own home. The trees looked as though the ones that didn't bear fruit flowered, and the tiles were all red. Even in half dark it was exactly the sort of american dream I had imagined him creating. I remember all his subtle grandeur about ‘parallel lives’.

Micheal, who at once seemed the calmest and most worried person in the world, crunched across the muddy and frozen gravel to open the gate for me. We exchanged a polite hello and he said they’d just finished dinner, and that his dad was upstairs as he opened the front door. A gust of warm air seemed to depressurize from inside. I felt on the precipice of someone else’s paradise. A place where I was not so much unwelcome, but uninvited.

I saw the second son first, sitting at a nearby table, staring at me with iceier versions of his father’s eyes, and darker hair, so still not quite right, but he fit the athletic style I had expected. That was all then, the whole story I had never dared to learn. Two perfect sons for perfect Oliver and his perfect american dream. But no. 

Looking down slightly, I discovered a third. A girl. Maybe eight or nine. She stared at me with perfect blue eyes, perfect tan face, farmed by perfect blonde hair. She was most definitely his. More like him than anyone. And deeply unnerving. 

“Is this him?”

She spoke at things, not to them.

“Yeah, it is. Don’t be weird to him, Vi.” Michael said. “Dad’s still on the phone?”

“I think so,” The little girl said, still holding my gaze.

“He wants to know where you were.” The boy at the table called. 

“Introduce yourselves.” Michael pushed his younger brother out of his seat on his way upstairs. “I’m going to get dad.”

“I’m Vi.” The little girl finally addressed me. I felt so much in flux speaking to children so forcefully real I had only ever imagined. I felt none of the animosity expected. Only small amounts of curiosity. 

“That’s Daniel.” She pointed behind her, to the teenager eating pizza judgmentally in my direction. 

“You’re italian.” Vi said at me. 

“I am.” 

“Can you speak italian?”

“Yes.” 

“Say something!” She looked thrilled at the prospect. No sense of transition.

“Don’t be weird, Vi.” Daniel said, echoing Michael’s earlier sentiment. 

I shrugged. “I don’t think it's that weird. I liked other languages at your age,” I leaned down slightly to better speak to her. “What would you like me to say?”

She asked me to introduce myself, which I did, than asked to be introduced, which again I did, and was so thrilled at the idea that things could be described, started asking me excitedly what all of the words meant. We heard a door slam, suddenly united by anticipation, the three of us. 

“... you had no right to read. They’re not meant for you.” I heard Oliver shouting rooms above. I shook off a headrush at the sound of his voce. I was too old for that sort of thing. I don’t recall ever hearing him shout with such inflection. 

“Would you please just talk to him?” Michael countered with equal ferocity, still muffled from above. 

“I am  _ your _ father! I’m the parent! I can handle things without my own children getting involved.”

“You sure as hell haven't been acting like it.” 

Footsteps hit the stairs, one pair chasing after the other.

“Michael shouldn’t have brought you.” Daniel said to me gravely just as the arguing appeared at the bottom of the stairwell. 

He always appeared to me so unceremoniously, just as someone I'd seen every day, not for a few riotous months, but like someone I walked past in the same spot on my way to work. He didn't see me at first. He was still losing ground to Michael. 

“Just tell him to leave.” He was saying. 

“No. Talk to him.” Michael pushed in front.

He saw me then, for the first time in years, bent over slightly, explaining conjugations to his daughter in a language not his own. Something in the scene hit him, I think. 

I’d never seen him so unwell. He was in clothes too old, too lose, and too tattered from any of my images of him. He was gaunt, and sickly, and still so handsome. One arm was in a sling. He looked almost as if he'd fought a war. Veterans, again united. 

“Elio.” He said. I don’t think he meant to.

“I didn’t mean to intrude.” I said, standing. “I can go.”

“No.” Michael said before anyone else could say anything.  

“Now is not the best time.” Oliver said tactfully, still trying to get a handle on his surprise while trying to parent his oldest son down from playing god. It might have been funny. 

“Don’t make the italy man leave, please dad,” Vi grabbed the edge of my jacket, looking at Oliver. “He was gonna tell me how to say unicorn!” 

Oliver looked from his daughter to me. “Is there a word for unicorn in italian?”

“ _ Unicorno. _ ” I said, trying to keep serious.

Oliver shook his head. “That’s not important-”

“You’re right,” Michael crossed to pick up Vi and start dragging Daniel to the stairs again. “What's important is that you two catch up and we all go to bed because it’s nine, it's very late, I'm sure everyone exhausted.”

“We didn't even do anything today.” Daniel mumbled. 

“Exactly, exhausting.” Michael pushed them up the stairs, only closing the door behind them after exchanging argumentative looks and gestures with oliver further. The door clicked shut. I could hear bickering from behind it.

“Sorry about that.” Oliver said, obviously far from the calm he was playing at. “Mikey shouldn’t have brought you. I’ll call you a cab.”

“It’s fine, I drove here.” I said, but made no motion to leave. 

“You really should go.” Oliver said. “I can take care of this. Just pretend this never happened.” 

“You always say something along those lines.” I murmured. 

He stopped. “I’m not trying to be a horrible person here, this is just-”

“Michael told me you tried to kill yourself.” I said. 

“Not that it should concern you.” He shot back with surprising hostility.

“I think it should. It does.”

“And you know everything, don't you?”

I wondered if he said it on purpose. 

_ I know nothing about the things that matter. _

I wondered if I did now.

“Well you can kick me out,” I looked around the house, avoiding his gaze. “But you should talk to someone, if not me.”

“And who else would I talk to, a shrink?”

“Most likely.”

“I hate doctors.” He turned to a table with classic crystal decanter on it. I didn’t previously know that he hated doctors. 

“You have a doctorate.”

“Don’t be charming right now, please?” he said. 

I almost laughed. I hadn't meant to be charming. How similar this was to the war memorial. How parallel.

_ Who else would I tell? _

I was about to leave.

“Did Mikey tell you why he went looking for you?” he said after a pause. 

“No, actually. He made it sound as though you’d asked for me.”

Oliver didn't fully react to this. 

He knocked back most of the drink he had poured himself, probably scotch, not grapa. He didn't smack his lips. He grimaced. 

“What did he tell you?”

“Almost nothing. Just that you should talk to someone.”

Oliver sighed very heavily.

“I thought you only had two.” I said.

“What?”

“You always said your two boys. There’s a third.”

“Oh. Vimini.”  He shifted his stance, I could tell the shoulder of the casted arm pained him. “She was an accident.”

I pulled back. “ _ Vimini _ ?”

Besidies how deeply I hated that any child could have been an accident, that he could be fucking his wife for fun, or just maybe deep enough in denial to, I felt almost affronted by the name. 

“I had a daughter, what else would I name her?”

“Something not Italy related.” I realized what I had implied, and tried to change the subject “How did she know I was Italian?”

“I told them.”

“About me?” 

“Nothing much. I've mentioned you as the man whose house I stayed at while I was abroad. Mikey explained to them you are ‘my only remaining friend’, apparently.”

I paused. “Am I?”

He shrugged. The winced. The injured arm, probably. He looked at the ground, then back up at the staircase that led back to his presumably warring children, but still not at me.

“They found our letters.” He said to the stairs.

“Who’s they? The kids?”

“No. Sandra. And then Mikey.”

“Sandra your wife?”

“Sandra my wife.” He looked almost amused by the title. “She left for New York. Said she never wants to see me again.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I said. Before I could even think of more to say, he spoke again. 

“You should leave,” Oliver repeated scriptedly.

“Did you suspect I would come?”

“I knew you would come if you heard.” He said. “But now you have, and I've explained. I have control of the situation, and you should go.”

“Do you want me to go?” I asked, standing to face him. I had never in my life expected to say such a bold thing to him, but now our dynamic was in flux. He was damaged more than I had ever even imagined him. Even dead he was composed in my mind. This was a strange Oliver of raw nerve and painkillers I had never met before. 

He hesitated. “You should leave.”

“You didn't answer my question.” 

He inhaled shakily. 

He looked up at me then, with a brief and broken look that almost scared me. He looked down again. 

“Please don't make me answer that.” He was almost inaudible. “Just go.”

I looked around us at the empty, pristine, American home. Then nodded. Silently I turned away from him and made for the door through which I had come. I looked over my shoulder at him. His eyes were still fixed to the staircase. 

“Goodnight, Oliver.”

“Night.”

Not even a slapdash, acknowledging  _ Later!. _

He didn't think as hard on it as I did. Likely, he barely remembered by now.


	3. Frozen Apricots

I woke up in my hotel room to my phone buzzing off the poorly shellacked side table. I wondered if it was my mother, calling to remind me of her existence in her new and old way. I flipped it open. It wasn't. 

“Hello?”

“Elio. It’s Oliver.”

I won’t pretend his voice over the phone didn't affect me; it did. I felt once again, briefly, completely scattered. 

“I need to ask you a favor.” He said. 

“Sure. Ask away.”

“Mikey and I are driving down to campus today and won’t be back until Sunday evening. Is there any way you could keep and eye on Daniel and Vi for me? Just until we get back.”

He sounded so apologetic. I tried to smother the urge to eagerly do anything he asked. I hated how easily I could convince myself I no longer cared. Twenty years and clearly I still did. At least enough to say yes.

“Uh, yeah. I can do that.”

“You sure you’re not busy-”

“No, Oliver, it’s fine.”

“I left a card and emergency contacts and everything with Daniel. We’re just leaving.”

“Great. Yeah, I’ll be right over.”

“Thank you, Elio.”

“Yeah. No problem.”

I didn’t like him saying my name so much. It irked me. It shouldn’t have.

 

When I arrived, I knocked, rather than be led in as before.

The door swung open. It was Vimini. 

“You’re back.” She said.

“I’m back.” I admitted. 

“He’s back!” She called over her shoulder to Daniel, who was walking down the stairs, on his phone. 

“Are you here to make sure we don’t die?” Vinimi asked me. 

“I suppose.”

“Dad already left.” Daniel said. It was either informative or an attempt at intimidation. I couldn’t tell. 

“He said.” I looked around the house, much more forgiving in daylight. 

Vimini looked up at me, studying. 

“What?” I asked her. 

“You should shave.” she said to me.

I was completely taken aback. “What?” I laughed a little. 

“I always thought you'd be prettier than when I met you, but you'd look very pretty if you shaved.” She offered as explanation.

I had no idea what to say to that. I don’t dislike children, I just didn't spend much time with them until then, and was completely unfamiliar with their naive candor. 

“Vi, stop bothering him.” Daniel knocked her a little as he passed. “Sorry about her,” He said to me. “She doesn't have any filters yet.”

“I have filters!” Vi shot at him.

“Do you even know what I mean when I say filters?” Daniel rolled his eyes, opening the fridge.

Vi shrugged this off. “I know you’re being mean.”

“You’re an adult.” Daniel stood back up out of the fridge to look at me, ignoring his sister. “Can you take us to get food? Dad left his credit card.”

Vi seized upon the idea. 

“Have you just been eating takeout?” I walked to the fridge, Vi imprinting on me as she followed, I was sure.

“Mostly.” Daniel shrugged. 

“Why not cook something?” I said. “If we’re driving anyway. Could go to a grocery store.”

Daniel grabbed the card off a nearby kitchen counter and vimini ran ahead of me before we even left the house to see my car. I forgot how exciting cars were as a child. I didn't really have passengers that weren't colleges or adult friends a lot, so daniel taking shit guna nd Vi launching into the backseat just to lean over the center console was new.

“How old are you?” Vimini asked as I started the car.

“Thirty-seven.” I said.

“A lot of adults forget how old they are,” She leaned back while I reversed. I wondered if she did this with Oliver. Or her mother. 

“I like to keep track,” I said absently.

“Where do you want to go for groceries?” Daniel didn't look up from his phone. 

“Whatever’s closest.”

The drive of ten minutes seemed to take ages, balancing Vimini’s questions and Daniel’s monotone directions. I wondered fleetingly if being a parent suited me at all. I never thought about kids; I never held a serious relationship for more than a few months. I always hated that Oliver made me think about permanent things like children. 

Parking and getting out Vi and Daniel knew exactly where they were going and i didn’t which resulted in a lot of dragging. Dragged to the entrance, dragged to a cart, dragged inside to their insistence that they were allowed to get only cereal and ice cream, and my insistence that their father would want them to have real food for a change.

“You should make us italian food,” Vimini said conversationally. 

“You think so?”

“Yeah, I can help. I can fry an egg myself.” She seemed very confident in this.

“Very exciting.” I nodded. 

Daniel actually looked up from his phone. “Can you cook?”

“I could.”

“Can I help?” Vi was shimming around the edge of the cart, feet on the rails.

“Sure.” 

It took the three of us about half an hour to track down all needed produce. Several of the minutes were dedicated to a very compelling argument as to why we should also get ice cream and pancake mix and, very specifically, frozen apricots. 

“Why frozen apricots?”

“Dad makes us smoothies with them.” Daniel tossed the bag into the cart. “It's one of his favorite things.”

I tried to be less thrown at each casual mention of each worn memory I had of Oliver. They seemed to be scattered about his real life. And he had written them off as fantasy. I wondered how happy he could have been. 

We ended up buying ready made lunches to save time for the following school days, and Vimini insisted on if not noodles, then meatballs, “very italian” - American children I swear to god -, which would take a decent amount of time. When we started dragging groceries from shop to car trunk, it had started snowing softly, some of the first of the season. Vimini asked me more questions, waiting for the car to warm up.

“My dad lived with you in Italy, right?”

“Well, he lived with my family.”

“Like your parents and siblings?”

“Just parents. I don’t have any siblings.”

“What are your parents like?”

“They’re nice. My father was a professor. My mother is really an artistic, wise person. They’re very kind people.”

“Ok now I ask me questions.” Vimini said.

Daniel rolled his eyes. 

“Alright,” I smiled. I liked Vimini’s bluntness. “How old are you?”

“I’m eight.”

“And how do you like school?”

“It's alright, I guess.”

“Any subject you like?”

“I like to read. And i like ballet. I take classes sometimes.”

“That sounds fun.” She was surprisingly easy to talk to. 

“Were your parents in love?”

“I think so. Yes.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“I wish mine were.”

“Don’t talk about it, Vi.” Daniel warned. 

“Why?”

“It’s not something we should talk about.”

“Because of Elio?” 

I wondered what they knew about me. 

“Because we shouldn't talk about it.” He glanced at me, then back to his screen. 

The car became silent until we got back to the house.

 

I had, of course, no idea in my mind of Oliver as a father. I had no idea, then, that he would have emphasized cooking as a skill. They, just like him, had no idea of manners or conduct but both expressed firm opinions on the flavor directions and sizes and textures of everything, dipping several spoons in the same thing periodically, selecting spices with an air of determination. It was already well past noon when we got back to the house, so undertaking an entire meal seemed a reasonable task, and lunch consisted of snacks. It was actually sort of fun, to help children haven't about a kitchen creating things to their liking. I could tell they hadn't done it in a long time. 

It was barely five, by the time we finished though. For weeks now the only idea in my head had been that I was going home soon. That I was letting go, or giving up, which was easier to think about. But just then, there was nothing outside the destroyed kitchen strewn with ingredients and Daniel and Vimini arguing good-naturedly. Daniel played music at Vimini’s request. Their taste was shit, but at least it was fun to sing along to. I wondered what music liver had raised his kids with, and hopefully not whether 70s trash this was. But maybe just that.

Maybe dinner was a success.

Just as we began the process of trying to recover the kitchen, archeologists of mess, their house phone rang. 

“Blumberg residence, Daniel speaking.” He said, rehearsed. It was funny to think of Oliver training his kids how to answer the phone. “Hey, dad. Yeah. No, we ate. We made dinner actually. Yeah. She’s fine. We’re good. Yeah.” He looked at me. “No, dad. He’s nice. Yeah, he made us dinner. Yeah, we’re cleaning. Ok, see you on thursday. Later.” There it was.

Daniel hung up and turned to me. “Dad says to make sure you brought things to spend the night, and if you didn't you can borrow stuff." I said I had brought things, thanks, Micheal had texted me to. 

Daniel went up to his room when we got back, leaving me to entertain Vimini myself, which menat Uno was off the table, but we could watch tv. She had very strong opinions on which Barbie movies were the best, and why Titania was the best Disney princess, topics I knew nothing about, but was very willing to be educated on.

“Do you have a favorite Disney princess?”

“I can’t say I’m particularly familiar with any of them.”

“I think you’d like Belle. She reads a lot. Dad told us you read a lot.”

“I do. Do you like to read?”

“I just read Peter Pan. Dad wants me to learn more about magical realism, he said it's a good introduction to the genre.”

Of course Oliver would raise an eight year old like this one; opinionated, intellectual, talkative. But I wondered why she only ever seemed to talk about him, and not her mother.

“Does your mother read to you often?”

“Not really. She's not home a lot.” Vimini looked troubled at the thought.

We watched a movie. She fell asleep on the couch, and I’ll admit I was invested enough to finish the children's movie myself before trying to wake her. She leant against me and yawned before saying “ok” and reaching her arms up. She was used to being carried to bed. I had never in my life carried a child to be tucked into bed, and I didn't anticipate how heavy she would be half asleep, almost tripping standing up, but she looped her arms around my neck in her stupor and was fast asleep before I even left the room. Daniel had offered me their spare room, which I took, but tread lightly even as I knew Oliver wasn't in the house. All the parallels were there, that was all I could think about. Parallels, parallels, parallels. The spare room across from his.   
  



	4. Old School

Daniel left a note saying he went to a friend's house. It was on the kitchen table when I got downstairs. 

“He does that a lot.” Vimini said. “He leaves notes when he leaves.”

“Is he not in the house a lot?”

“No, I wouldn’t be either.”

“Don’t you have any friends houses to go to?”

Vimini shrugged. “Sometimes.”

How she reminded me of myself. And she was eight.

“You know,” I told her. “a friend of mine has a girl about your age.”

“In Cape Cod?”

“No, not here. In France.”

“You’ve been to France, too?”

“Sure.”

“Can you speak French?”

“Just about.”

“What’s her name?”

The friend or her daughter? I asked. Both. Either. 

“Marzia. Her daughter’s called Camille.”

 

A weekend would be an eternity. Vimini had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and after we figured out breakfast she grabbed my arm. 

“I’m bored.”

“How unfortunate.” I said.

She smiled sideways. I think i knew how to talk to her.

“What could i do to make you unbored?” I asked her more politely.

She shrugged. “Let's go do something.” 

“Like what?”

“There coffee in town. Grown ups like coffee.”

“It’s true, we do.”

We decided on going into town.

She brought a book. I brought my laptop. I sat across from her in a weathered booth inside a warm and tiny coffee shop in Dennis, MA. I got an americano, which i shouldn't have because i don’t even like them but the thought of getting one made me laugh. I got her a slice of pie. 

After twenty minutes of strangely comfortable silence, i looked over the top of my laptop at her. 

“Vimini.” 

She looked up. 

“What are you reading?” I asked.

She flipped the cover up to face me. “Watership Down.”

“Oh, the socialist bunnies.”

“Socialist?” 

“It’s a form of government.” I started. “It’s hard to explain without any background in basic societal structures.”

“Try.” She shrugged.

I thought for a moment. “You know how people buy the things they need to survive? And sometimes they can’t buy enough?”

She nodded. 

“Socialism is where the government tries to makes sure everyone has enough, more or less, of the things they need to survive.”

“That sounds like a good thing.”

“Sometimes it is. Sometimes It isn't. Depends who you ask.”

She nodded again. She went back to her book.

After a pause, i thought i should talk to her again. 

“Vimini.” 

“You don’t have to say my whole name every time. Most people call me Vi.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange your father picked me to watch you while he’s gone? You barely know me.”

“No,” Vimini shattered the crust of her pie with the side of her fork. “I know who you are.”

“Really?” 

She nodded. “Your name is Elio Perlman, you’re from Italy where my dad stayed when he was in graduate school, you can play the piano, you like Monet, the painter, and Mikey said you and dad used to date.”

“He said that?”

She shrugged, as if to say it was up to me.

“And you don’t think that’s strange?”

“Everything’s strange,” said the unconcerned and brilliant eight-year-old Vimini. Perhaps she’d been reincarnated. 

It was interesting to hear everything Oliver’s youngest child knew about me distilled into a sentence. 

“Also, I think you're in change of watching me because my dad doesn't have any friends right now.”

“No friends?”

“That’s what they said.”

“Who?”

“All the adults in my life who say things.”

“You're an interesting child.”

“I get that a lot.”

I got her more pie.

I asked her what one did around the town for fun.

“There’s only two bars around here.” She said.

I specified that I meant for someone her age.

“There’s a bookstore, a park, and a record store. Dad takes me in sometimes. Or he did.”

“You like vinyl?”

“I like the smell.”

“Let’s go there, then.”

As we walked out of the coffee shop, Vimini grabbed my gloved hand with her pink mittened one. I couldn't remember the last time a child grabbed my hand. I never wanted kids, and few of my friends had ever had them. Except Mazia. Before Marzia had kids she always talked about how her biological clock was ticking. Maybe this is what she meant. 

The silence in walking was less comfortable. I asked Vimini what she was interested in.

“I do ballet after school.” She offered. 

“How’s that?”

“It's good. I like dancing. And the teacher’s nice.”

“Anything else?”

“Disney princesses. The color blue. Cats. I like cats. I want a cat but my mom said no.”

“Ever had any pets?”

“Nope.”

“I never had pets growing up either.” I tilted my head in acknowledgement of our shared tragedy. 

“Did you want them?”

“When I was your age I wanted a dog. A big old one. Not the loud little ones.”

“I want a black cat. Witches have black cats.”

“I thought you wanted to be a princess?”   
“I like them, but i don’t want to be them. Sounds too hard.”

“Compelling argument.”

A little silver bell rang above the door when we entered the record store. There was one young woman with horribly dyed hair behind the register who looked up, then down at her phone again. Vimini pulled me after her to big glass case filed with stickers, which she began to tell me about. 

“I have a sticker like that lightning bolt in the corner, dad said it’s for David Bowie, but i just like the colors. I have a box of stickers. I think maybe I’m collecting them. That ones the Queen crown. That’s the B-52s! This ones a banana from an album that my dad listens to a lot, but i forget who it’s by.” She looked back up at me. “Do you know all of this already?”

“I don’t mind being reminded.” I said. I pointed across her. “The banana is The Velvet Underground. Andy Warhol did the design.”

“Who’s he?”

“He did art in the 60s.”

She nodded. I think she liked her questions all being answered in succession. 

“Who are the Talking Heads?” She read the sticker I had picked up.

“They were a band when I was a kid.”

“Do you like them?”

“Yeah. I used to have a shirt.”

“You should get the sticker.”

“Maybe.”

Vimini was far less interested in the actual vinyl than she was the stickers, pins, and posters, but she did like me talking about music for a while if I answered all her questions. 

Who’s Robert Smith? What’s phlanger? When did that album come out? How old were you? 

She asked anything that came to mind. 

“Do you know any new music?” I asked her.

“Sure. I know the Ting-Tings. And katy perry, but she's not very good.”

“How's that?”

“She said mean things about gay people. And she's not a feminist.”

“Oh?” I laughed. “Aren’t you a bit young for politics?”

“No.”

I couldn't exactly disagree with her. 

I bought the sticker, but I gave it to her, and said to add it to her collection. 

“When does my dad come back tomorrow?” She asked on our way back. I let her sit in the front, which she was probably too young for, but had little to no idea how children worked.

“I don’t know.” I admitted. 

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“He just said tomorrow.”

“Is he mad at you?”

“I hope not.” 

“Are you still friends?”

“I hope so.”

  
  



	5. Write Me

A few hours before, the evening prior to Oliver’s return, which i had failed to not think about several times, we, Vimini Daniel and I, as a troop coveened to make dinner and needed scissors.

“There’s supposed to be kitchen scissors.” Daniel said, stating the obvious unhelpfully.

“Well not anymore so where do i find some.” I folded my jacket over the end of a kitchen chair. This family gravitated toward that kitchen.

“Dad’s office.” Daniel shrugged. “Second drawer.”

It took me until i was stepping through the threshold of Oliver’s office - which smelled relentlessly like him - to realize i had no idea what second drawer meant. Second from the top? The bottom? The left?

And a desk had never had so many drawers.

I counted in twos and found nothing so sat down at the desk itself and opened drawers at random. Mostly paper. Pens. A file drawer. A drawing from Vi when she was four, it said so on the paper, a stapler, and finally a box that looked to be about scissor sized so i opened it.

Letters.

God, my letters.

There's were them that got him so deep in this shit show where i would have to watch his kids while he went off to get slapped on the hand but some authority. I could see my name in the upper left corner and could see the handwriting i had since gotten rid of to be more legible, take better notes. It was juvenile handwriting. and he kept every single one here, in his house. They weren't even dusty.

But i doubt he thumbed through them regularly, or anything. Likely they had just been brought back from his office last month and rifled through during the chaos.

But he really had kept them. Every single one. I didn't want to read them, I cringed at what id said, but i flicked through them anyway; they were half mine.

He had never written back.

I was just getting to the last one i had ever sent (March, 1990, and completely tragic) when i found a new piece of paper, standing out from the others.

His university's stationary.

No stamp, no address, no envelope, no anything.

I pulled it out, and i shouldn't have, just like his bathing suit. I shouldn't have pulled it out but i did. I knew almost instantly what it was. I wanted to read every fucking word.

 

~~_Elio,_ ~~

 

Crossed out.

 

~~_Dear Elio,_ ~~

 

Crossed out again. Then,

 

_Oliver,_

 

I sucked in a breath. He remembered.

 

_I shouldn’t be writing this. I shouldn’t indulge my memories of you. I’m sure I won’t ever send this. I’m not even sure who it’s for. Both of us, maybe. Maybe I’m being foolish, and it’s just for me._

 

I had to read the words so deliberately to make sure they were written how I saw them.

 

~~_I miss you._ ~~

_~~I regret everything.~~ _ _That’s not true. I remember everything, I told you that. I regret everything after. I thought I wanted this life that I have. I don’t think I do. I had a plan. I had the perfect fulfilling plan for how everything would go for the rest of my life. College, graduate school, a job, a wife, children, happiness. I never could have anticipated you. I used to hate you for how happy you made me then. Now, I just hate myself. I feel as if I’ve left some great thing unsaid, some action not taken. I am terrified I will never again feel the way I felt with you. From the looks of things, I won’t. I wish I had gone with you to get that drink. I wish you had come to dinner._

_I hope this letter finds you well. Or at least, better off than me. I’m not sure how to sign this._

~~_Sincerely,_ ~~

~~_Warmly,_ ~~

_Yours,_

_Elio_

 

So he had said goodbye. This read easily as a suicide note, addressed almost to me as he had first left me, seventeen, more eccentric then than I was now. I think I read it that way.

I folded it again. I put it back in the box. I closed the drawer.

Scissors.

I found them easily after that. What was it my mother said about easily finding what you weren't looking for?

 

 

Oliver came back eight. Rather, Mikey brought him back at eight, and I had to sit and pretend that I hadn't heard the car because I couldn't act so obsessive in front of his kids which was still surreal as hell. I had to wait until they heard him, and Daniel just remarked but Vimini ran outside in the frost and then came back in defeat when her feet started hurting - she didn't wear shoes. 

“You need shoes,” I told her. All adults are hypocrites.

“Do I?” She looked up at me, defiant, lips blue. 

As soon as Oliver got in I stood up from my assumed place at the kitchen table, and just nodded politely and answered his questions. But he barely spoke to me. He sent his kids to bed and Mikey had work to do and soon everyone had disappeared except for me. I wonder what would have happened if i left right then.

“Hope they didn’t give you too much trouble,” He said.

“Not at all.”

“Vinimi is a handful sometimes.”

“She reminds me of myself.”

“Really?” He actually looked at me. 

“I was a lot like that at her age.”

“Huh.”

If I could get anything out of this, it would just be looking at him, which I did. But rarely did he look at me. I wondered if he was as perturbed by my aging as I was his. 

Not just that he had aged, but that I hadn't been there to watch it happen slowly enough to not notice. 

“How’s your mother?” He won’t allow any sort of moment to happen

“She's doing well. She doesn't like being alone in the house, so she asked me to go back.”

“How long do you think?”

“A while.”

“The apartment to get back to, yeah?”

“I’m just about to move actually. Even if i don’t stay with my mother I'm going back to europe indefinitely.”

“When?”

“Two and a half weeks.”

He looked at me again. Why did he look so sparingly?

“What?” I asked. 

“Nothing, nothing. I’m just...surprised.”

I thought of the letter. The letter, the letter. Did he mean it? Did he still feel that way? Had he ever felt that way? If he hadn't sent it, maybe he didn't really think all that and just needed it out of his system. Maybe he planted it. No, that's ridiculous. But what did it mean, if anything?

As I was grabbing my one bag from the guest room and saying polite goodbyes to the kids, Oliver said we should get lunch. As a thank you. He didn't even shake my hand. Just let me leave. Like it was nothing. Maybe it was.

Oh, but the letter...  



	6. Phone a Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I updated the last chapter yesterday so make sure you've read that first! or this wont make sense. And thank you for reading! - Gogo

Oliver followed up with his lunch proposal, which I hadn't thought he would. I Didn't think he was serious, It’s just one of those things you say. 

“Let’s get lunch sometime.”

But he called me, for a second time, asking if I was available that day. I Could have lied and said I was busy. Hell, I could have made plans. But I said he should pick where because I never really knew the area that well.

I spent the whole morning in juvenile turmoil, trying and failing to act my age, to feel my age. This was stupid. I was being stupid.

I checked my watch. 9:37. Plus nine for Paris. 18:37. I called Marzia and she should have been awake but she didn’t pick up so I texted her.  _ Call me when you have a minute, I need your wisdom. _

I ran errands and tried not to think about lunch until I was parking, walking inside the cafe. 

He didn't even stand up. He smiled, though. I thought for a second, maybe… but no, it was just a piece his grandiose manner I liked so much. 

“I wasn't sure you’d show.” He said amicably. So we were doing that, then. Playing at really just being old friends. 

“Well,” I sat down. “Here I am.”

I hated him for at least seeming so carefree, ignorant to the pieces of us that could be stumbled upon in normal conversation. 

_ I’m so glad you’re here.  _

It didn't take long of making small talk for him to reveal why he’d asked me to lunch. Of course not to see me. Of course not to spend time together. And nothing and no one felt awake, like at the bar, or in B. after my father died. It felt just as icy as before. When nothing had happened. 

“I’m afraid I had an ulterior motive in asking you here.” He said casually. 

“You always do.”

He laughed shortly, brushing me off. 

“We’re without a car besides Mikey’s right now. He supposed to go to New York until January. I was wondering if there’s any chance you wouldn't mind taking Vimini and Daniel to school the next two weeks.” He said it so fast and so sure it would have been impossible to refuse anyway. Like it was a very very reasonable request. Not at all deeply odd or concerning and not having anything to do with the new brace on his left wrist. What had he even done to himself?

“I realize if might come off as a strange request,” He was saying.

“It’s fine. I’ll do it.”

“Only if it’s not too much trouble.”

“It’s not.” I said flatly, frustrated at how easy this was for him, and how we really could behave as old, close friends. As if I’d been a college friend, or his best man, or a dear coworker, men of platonic certainty. 

But i said yes because i wanted to be in his life again. If only for a minute. If only as assistance to something inane. I might never see him again, i had realized when he asked. If I want a guarantee that he cant ignore me, for what felt like the last two weeks of a life in many, I should help him. 

The rest of it was normal. He even laughed once. And he shook my hand as he left. Brief, kind, almost professional. But i dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand for a split second as I was leaving. Some of it was already back.   
  


 

After texting back and forth in brief, and Mikey sent off for the rest of the month, it wa arranged when i’d get them, when i’d bring them back, and besides that Oliver said he ‘owed me one’, a phrase i coveted. He didn't mean it. But how incredible it would be if he did. I had no idea what he meant.

When weather allowed it, Daniel got himself to school. He biked. But because of the snow, he would often hitch a ride with whoever was taking vimini to grade school that morning, as the two weren't too far apart. The locality of the area cape cod they lived in was painfully small. 

Vimini was thrilled to see me again. Daniel was neutral, which I suppose was good for him. It was like being a relative almost. Oliver shook my hand again. I tried desperately not to fixate on it. I was not seventeen. I was an adult. Who had been to school and dated plenty of people and been in love twice now and done more wildly perverted things than Oliver could probably even imagine. This mindset helped not at all when interacting with him.

When I dropped them off that monday, Oliver invited me to stay for dinner, while artfully making it sound like I couldn't, that I was probably busy, what with my exciting life of semi fame and such. I went along with it, and left. 

I made plans to grab drinks with a  friend later in the evening. I worked on a new piece, gifted from a friend, but the sound of the stand up piano in the nearly empty apartment just made it seem like I should be melancholy, so i stopped. My mother called me. 

“Elio, how I miss you!”

“I know,  _ mamon _ , I miss you too.”

“Can’t you come back any sooner?”

“I’d like too, but I’ve got, uh, loose ends to tie up.”

“What loose ends.”

“You know, packing, projects, saying goodbye to old friends.”

She always was suspicious of me being vague. 

“Anyone I would know?”

“No,” I lied, perhaps too quickly. “Artists. Musicians. People of my ilk.” I exaggerated the word slightly. She knew what I meant. 

She said she loved me. I loved her too. 

Then not five minutes later Marzia called.

“Your  _ mamon _ said you’re being suspicious.” She started. 

“She called you to tell you that, did she?”

“We talk about things other than you, bigshot.”

“Well I'll be home soon enough and I'll come see you and your baby after. How is she, anyway?”

“She’s good,” I heard Marzia hold the receiver away from her mouth. “ _ Cheri _ , say hi to Elio! Say hi!”

No response even after Marzia’s hopeful silence. 

“She’s so quiet. Should I be worried? Is that bad if a baby’s quiet?”

“You’re a good mother, Marzia.”

“I know, I know. I’m just worried. Camille was never this quiet,” She sighed.

“How old is she now?”

“She's eight. It's an odd gap, eight and a baby. But it's nice. Less to do than two toddlers, I think.”

“Right, right.” Vimini was eight, I thought. I could be her father.

“So what are the loose ends? Anything juicy you could tell me? Just wok things? Or drama? Is it Cameron?”

“No, we both know Cameron would murder me in cold blood if she could.”

“You’re still in Cape Cod, no?”

“I am.”

“What, then?”

I hesitated.

“I don’t think I should tell you.” I almost winced.

“Why? Is-” She gasped audibly. “ _ Elio. _ ”

“What?” Of course she would guess. And so quickly. She knew me too well.

“No,” She said.

“‘No,’ what?”

“No!”

I sighed very heavily. 

“Listen, we’re not-”

“He’s  _ married _ ! He has  _ children _ !”

“We’re not sleeping together!”

“But it’s  _ him _ ! And- and it’s  _ you _ !” I could see her waving her hands in my mind’s eye.

“What do you mean ‘it's me?”

“You have questionable morals!”

“That was uncalled for.”

“He! Is! Married!”

“Well…”

“He got  _ divorced _ ?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Did you complicate it?”

“Marzia-”

“I can never tell with you!”

I sat down on the old loveseat in my living room. One of the only chairs still in the place. Already I felt slightly less insane that someone else knew what was happening - how strange it all was.

“We’re not sleeping together,” I said again. 

“Other things are just as unfaithful.”

“I’m going to ignore that and explain. He’s tried to kill himself.”

“Oh, god.” Marzia sounded suddenly somber. We’d had friends do that sort of thing before, about the same subject.

“He needs help with his kids, just for a couple of weeks, and I don’t see why-”

“Elio, don’t seduce him.” 

Offended, I said “Alright, now you're-”

“No, I’m serious!” She cut me off. “I know you still care about him. You can’t stay if you’re just trying to sleep with him again. You have to stay because you  _ want _ to  _ help _ .”

“I do want to help.” 

I realized I hadn't admitted that yet. 

“Good.”

  
  



	7. Come to Dinner Sometime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have no beta and every time I work on this I end of being high to curb my nerves so there's LOADS of typos in this baby fever dream. If yah have gotten past that, bless you for still reading. If even one person still likes this by the end I will be overjoyed. All my love, Gogo

Committed to helping, I returned, and for a full week, If anything to prove that I wasn't just trying to sleep with him. I wasn't like that anymore. And I had never been like that with him. 

MArzia painfully reminds me of Cameron, who lived a few rooms down from us as university, whose heart I broke into a million pieces when i slept with her twin brother. I never knew why I did that. Cameron was the most stable relationship I had ever had, and I truly cared for her. I had said I loved her. BUt did I Really? To leave it all so easily?

Marzia didn’t think I was a bad person, she said I just wasn't always kind. Hardly ever, really. 

I was always kind to Oliver. 

Marzia didn’t think I was a bad person, I did.

I didn’t care, when I was younger. I wanted to be happy. I’d do anything to get there. Be anyone. Hurt anyone. 

I settled down somewhere around 30, like most people do. I made a name for myself. I fell out of the spotlight. 

Still marzia tells me I’m a good person. 

I didn’t believe her. 

 

That first week nothing happened. He barely spoke to me. Not until thursday. He asked me to take him to a doctors appointment if I wouldn't mind particularly, which I didn't, and he had to make his fake pleasant conversation with me again, even with just the two of us in the car, grasping at straws. 

It was a therapist appointment, i later found out. I didn’t ask. I didn’t know until later because half his appointment were for his physical health. The sling, to the brace, to nothing but a fainter line at his wrist than the rest of his less-perfect, still perfect skin. If I looked to long at the line I wanted to trace it, and would never, could never, so didn’t look. 

He had a chiropractor too. That’s about when I found out what he’d done. 

“This is a fucking dollhouse.” Daniel said, just as I was about to leave. 

I could see the anger just breathe the surface, but was surprised the first time he showed it around me. The way it came tumbling out in fits and spurts on intentionality, he wanted someone to know. I just so happened to be there.

I looked back at him, attentive in just the way kids like adults to be. I felt nosy, but so curious I could die. 

“How do you mean?” I realized Daniel hadn't said anything so honest before in my presence. 

“Dad just going on pretending everything fine. Crashes his car - our car - mom leaves, you’re here. And were supposed to pretend like everything fine. It’s not fine.”

He slammed the door to his room. 

Oliver had crashed his car trying to kill himself. The reality hit me again in a disjointed sort of way I hated down to its very core. It was too real. A lovely thing about us was none of it might have been real He denied it so much it could have been my one true fever dream and i could be free if only I thought about it but no.

It had happened.

And he was someone else without me, and someone else from his family. HE was tormented enough to try and kill himself. 

Sad, angry, guilty, hateful, exhausted.

So tired he couldn't bare to go on

As I walked back out the front door, I looked up as if I could see through the ceiling, and wished he would say something to me.

“You’re a puppy, I swear to god.” Marzia berated.

“If anything I’m consciously self destructive.” I mumbled, in the process of making a gin and tonic, phone pressed against my head and shoulder. “That’s not very puppy like.”

“Why are you even talking to me about it if you’re not taking my advice?”   
“Because I had no one to talk to last time and I wish I had.”

“You know you could have talked to me.”

“I didn't know that then. But I’m glad I know that now.”

“Isn't this painfully awkward? Besides anything else?” She asked.

“Quite a bit, yeah, but i’m very good at pretending.”

“No, you’re not.”

I set my glass down emphatically. “You know you would be nice to me for one second.”

“I’m so nice to you. You deserve this.”

 

She didn't mean it like anything. Like I deserved the dull agony of him, again. Every time I saw him the same pain, in the same unspoken words, with the same smile, and after the first time, when the pain dulled once, I thought perhaps it would fade and fade and fade until it was almost nothing, but it didn’t. I faded once, and stayed the rest of those years just under the surface. 

Painful.

 

He would start his fun and light small talk and eventually I would buy in. Maybe monday of the second week. I would lean in even slightly too hard, however, and he would pull back. reminding that we are not actually close like that. We are miles and miles and miles apart even when so close. He made sure of that. 

 

I was had over for dinner. 

Over and over I remembered when he asked my to come around for dinner, meet his wife, his kids, and I think if anything he remembered that, because of that sunday night, there was almost an undertone of humor. Like an inside joke. A bad song only we could recognise from a mile away. Vimini loved it, dominating conversation to talk only to me breaking off to bicker with daniel, middle child syndrome flaring up. I looked across the table at Oliver, who smiled and easily broke up whatever disagreement the two had. It was nice. The small talk, finally, seemed real. Easy. Like we did know each other, and he was willing to recognise that. 

A brief moment of serenity seemed to fall, at dinner. 

It was gone as soon as it arrived. 

I was back home, after a stiff goodbye, thinking for the millionth time how I was wasting time. 

With him, without him. Just wasting time. 

What time did either of us even have left?

  
  



	8. Domestique

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY YALL its me I'm back two chaps in one day! In my timezone at least. I'm so thrilled by the good reception I've been getting and I love you all so much. This is also I painfully slow burn chapter but with any luck ill get the first Real Shit chapter to you tomorrow! All my love, Gogo

More school. More doctors appointments. Possibly less weird. Types of strange were exchanged for the other. It was no longer strange that I would help in such a domestic capacity. It was strange that it no longer felt so. It seemed, not mechanical, but habitual. 

Normal, maybe.

The first step towards Oliver’s small talk being less forced, Daniel being less standoffish, Vimini asking less questions about me, and more about life in general. It was all becoming normal. How long had I been away never having come here in the first place? Cyclical. 

Daniel apologized to me for his outburst in just the calculated way his father would, knowing what he should say. 

“I don’t care.” I was relieved that he was beginning to warm up to me. 

“It’s just like, we don’t really have an adult right now, and you’re pretty alright, I guess.”

“Thank you, daniel.”

“Yeah, whatever. I still think this is weird.”

I laughed a little. 

After that, on occasion, Daniel would make conversation with me. It was entirely about something he called “pop punk.” Very popular currently, I had heard some, and cared for little, but it seemed to comprise most of what he cared about, so I learned more against my will. 

Picking the two kids up and dropping them of got easier and easier. They talked to me, talked freely to each other, complained, enthused. It was nice. I had never before been familiar with that kind of dynamic, sve when I was around twelve, between myself and my parents, playful and curious. Nothing particularly complicated. I helped with homework on more than one occasion, Oliver slightly recluse even when I wasn't around, it was reported. I must admit, at times I prefered seeing the children rather than oliver himself. Less complicated. 

He was still so turned in, downcast.

But again, dinner. The second time there was no formal invitation, ot just happened that food and I were present at the same time. 

After dinner, he asked for my help on starting dishes. This seemed a simple and innocent task, but, credit to the cheap wine he’d been drinking - would he drink just anything now? -, he seemed more relaxed, truly close to unfiltered, talking about anything and everything, trying to get me to join. Everyone else in bed, and time forgetting us whenever together, I didn't realized what time it was until I checked my phone.

“It’s almost midnight.” 

“Oh, crap, these should have been done by now.” He laughed, berating himself about the condition of the kitchen. “We should just finish this bottle and close up.

Without really thinking too much about it, I poured myself a glass of whatever terribly cheap wine he was drinking. Strange little things like that, I now knew. Where his glasses were, how they were all stored right side up. Where new sponges were. The outlet in the living room that didn't work. Odds and ends of his house, that I never thought id even see. 

“This is really bad.” I said to the glass after taking a sip.

“Oh, it's disgusting.” He laughed.

I shrugged and drank more. 

Then he started talking about me. Walking vague, too delicate to be casual circles around me. 

“You know, you’re a lot more, I dunno,  _ cold _ now.” He sipped his terrible wine.

“Cold?”

“Yeah. Like judgemental.”

“I've always been judgemental.”

“No, you’ve always been observant. Now most of the observations are mean.”

He thought more highly of myself than I did. Perhaps he didn't hate me. Maybe he was trying to. 

“I hope I haven't-”

I almost said offended. It was like the world around us was blurring, memories bleeding together, still perfect in detail, but repeating words and phrases and actions seeming to permeate years of our lives, no longer parallel. Cyclical.

“No, I just think its funny.” He looked at me sideways. “You seem more direct now, too.”

“Oh?” I coughed a laugh.

“Less standoffish.”

I smiled, surprised. ”Thank you, I guess.”

“You,” He raised his near empty glass to me “Are very welcome.”

Then he announced he was going to bed, queuing me to leave, and waved a more cheerful goodby ethan i had ever seen from him. He was always happier when he was drunk, it was a wonder he kept a tight enough hold to to abuse that. Maybe if he drank more he wouldn't have tried so soberly to kill himself. Maybe he had been drinking. I wish I knew from him what happened. 

Maybe if he stayed like this, to me, I would. 

  
  



	9. I Have To Admit, It's Getting Better

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty sure I'll be posting chapter ten tonight as I wanna get this whole thing out there by Wednesday, when I graduate high school. Seems like a good wrap up moment for me. I love you all so much for reading, this is going better than I ever hoped! - Gogo

Saturday, I think to everyone's surprise, Oliver said he was going out. He said he hated feeling like an invalid and would come back later and left. Vimini found this fascinating. 

“He hasn't left the house in like a month and a half.” Daniel told me.

“He’s getting better.” Vimini said, slightly awed.

“Maybe.” Daniel shrugged. 

Both of them decided to make it my problem that they were bored. Daniel’s friend cancelled on him last minute, leaving him with no plans and Vimini was lamenting the fact that the pool was drained, despite my telling her it would have frozen over. 

“We need a hot tub.” She sighed heavily, leaning her full weight on me.

“What do you do when you get bored like this usually?” I pried her off my leg and tried problem solve.

Vimini perked up at that.  “Board games.”

Daniel half ran back into the room. 

“If we have three people we can play Apples to Apples.”

“But Daniel, I don’t know who all the people are. It's no fun,” Vi protested half whining. “What about monopoly?”

“Fuck no.” Daniel rebuffed her decisively.

Eventually they settled on The Game of Life, which I had never played, even though I knew of it. I think they had more fun explaining to rules to me than they did actually playing. So far apart in age, they seemed to hate or adore each other at any given time.

So we played that for the following few hours. I realized part way through that i was smiling the sort of irrepressible smile that only ever sneaks up on a person. Having kids like you was so different than the respect of other adults, like maybe i was a good enough person to actually deserve it. 

Oliver was out longer than expected, of course, and by the time he got back Vimini was asleep and Daniel was playing video games in his room. 

When Oliver came back, he seemed very briefly happier, he was amicable, almost funny. To be fair, it was easy for him to get me to laugh. 

When I wished him goodnight, he said it back. He held my hand in his just long enough to say thank you. A real one, and genive one. Where the blue in his eyes didn't seem forever like ice. He was just looked at me, thanking me, and closing the door. The muddy frost crunched under my shoes.

 

Oliver was very good at pretending everything was normal at the would-be most uncomfortable times. Completely helpless to the idea of the letter he had written, I found myself in a place I suspected shamefully I had never left - I would do anything for him. Still.

He asked my to drive him to a psychiatrist appointment. 

“So you found one?” I tried to ignore how absolutely disgusting all the coffee in his house was while drinking it. 

“I did.” He nodded, adjusting his collar. He had actually had one for some time, reluctant to admit it. 

Every time in those two weeks he adjusted his clothes, or picked up a glass, or opened a book, I filled it away in a compendium of mannerisms, determined to never forget this, just as determined as before. 

As i waited, I wondered why, for the millionth time, I was letting myself get used. Not that it was anything extreme, just that it was intensely domestic. I had dated people. Seriously. Cameron, who marzia accused me of tormenting more than anyone deserved,  moved in with me before she found out I was sleeping with her brother. And sure I’d made breakfast, or had it made for me, had a drawer with someone else's socks in it, but never in my life had I done this. Let myself be intimated enough to take care of someone. 

 

When he got back, got back in my car to go home, i was about to start the engine when he stopped me.

“I crashed my car.” 

“What?” I was completely taken off guard.

“I crashed my car. In ‘an attempt to end my own life’. That's what they wrote down on the report, anyway.”

“Yeah, I , uh, I heard.” 

He used to be so full of life, now, completely devoid. 

“That’s why I can’t just drive myself places. And I can't go back to work until i'm cleared by a doctor.”

I just nodded.

“Do they hate me?” He asked. It was all so sudden. Like he just needed to say it all at once. I wished for the millionth time I’d known him as close as this my whole life. 

“Does who hate you?”

“The kids.” He gestured vaguely.

“I don’t think so.”

“They should.” 

“They adore you, Oliver. I think they’re just confused.”

He sighed. “Like I could explain.”

“You could.” 

“Oh, and what would I say?”

“Well, they know you’re…”

He sighed, letting his head fall into his hands. 

“Just, say you made a mistake. And you’re trying to get better. And that you love them. That’s what I would want to hear.”

He looked sideways at me. “You think that would work?”

“I do.”

He was silent for a bit.

“Why did you never have kids?” He asked. “You’d be good at it.” He asked such leading questions. 

“Never dated anyone I would want to raise them with, I guess.”

He nodded. 

“Sandra is a terrible mother.” He said finally, as if he'd been waiting to tell someone - anyone, what he actually thought. 

“Oh?” I laughed a bit.

“We completely disagree about discipline, and she's a shit cook - not that women should cook, or anything, just that, I mean, you know how important that is to me.”

“I do.”

“And she hardly ever wanted to spend time with us, as a family. She was looking for an excuse to leave, you know? I kept hoping shed step up to help, and be involved. But she never did.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She was so pissed when she found the letters. She hated not being the center of attention. She’d have reacted the same if you were a girl, I bet. You being you made it so much worse, though.”

He said it with a smile playing on his lips. Like he’d always secretly wanted her to know. Like he got some twisted satisfaction out of it. He was perfect for me. Always had been, always will be. 

“Did you always want kids?” I asked after a pause.

“Always. Long as I can remember. Love ‘em.”

“And does it always take you this long to open up to people?” I asked. 

“Pretty much, yeah.” He laughed slightly. 

The ice between us was melting, even as snow gathered on the ground about town. 

  
  



	10. Corruption and Perversion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can probably get from the chapter title this isn't an easy one. Prepare. Thank you all so much for your crazy amounts of support holy hell I love you  
> Also, if you like this then you might like the playlist I made for it!:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/ljandac/playlist/6k04HTnUpdUFwCKYtJcvmZ?si=uFOYzMW9SumYxzIA1FPoeg
> 
> Enjoy and THANK YOU AGAIN AAAAAAAAAAA  
> All my love, Gogo

I fell asleep on his couch. It was later in the evening, winter always makes me tired, and Vimini wanted to watch a TV movie. The warm haze of it had me nodding off about halfway through. Oliver got Vimini in bed without waking me. He should have woken me up, likely, but he didn't. 

Half asleep, I could have sworn he paused, just next to me before walking away. A pause that could mean anything.

I woke up obscenely early, suddenly aware how uncomfortable I was. But even at 5 on a Tuesday, he was up already, making breakfast. Finally, it seemed like he was really feeling better. 

I tried to get as much composure as minutes from dead sleep would allow. 

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I said, trying to be fully coherent. 

“Didn’t want to bother you.” 

Bullshit. 

How close I was to something I had promised myself I wouldn't want. 

Oliver said I should come back after taking the kids, but I blindly declined, saying I had to finish things around my apartment. He made me promise I’d come back for dinner. He set a hand my shoulder. Familiar, or not familiar? I didn't know. It was as surreal now as meeting his kids had been only half a month ago. There was nothing left in my apartment. Only the bed I wasn't talking, the distressed loveseat, old takeout, and the piano. I had to find something to do with the piano. 

 

I had secretly always wanted to meet Oliver’s fiance/wife, because, as a young man, I was convinced I would hate her. As an adult I thought she would just make me sad. Never in my life would I have been prepared for the cocktail of emotions that arose when she showed up to his house just before dinner. 

We all heard to car pulling up, because the door was ajar - I was just leaving. The sun was setting, not that we could see much of it, and Oliver was outside before any of us. 

I was less ashamed of casually listening in, because both kids did it shamelessly. Vimini ran to the doorway as it closed, standing on her tiptoes to see out and Daniel pressed a hand to the kitchen window, as if he could hear better through the glass. Oliver approached her, voiced raised just enough:

“Sandra, why-”

“I forgot some things.” She was saying, beautiful, tense. “I want them back, and I’ll be out of you hair.”

“Sandra.” Oliver tried, but she walked past him, and I saw her. 

I had never seen a more beautiful woman of that age and I hated it. She was in perfect shape, effortlessly done up, and crowned in strawberry blonde curls. 

If I thought of the ideal American housewife, she fit the bill perfectly. No wonder Oliver had convinced himself to marry her. 

“Sandra.” Oliver tried to catch up to her imperious stride. “You can’t just show up like this-”

“It’s my house, too, Oliver.”

I realized then that she had no idea I was there. How could she? No one had spoken to her since she left. 

“This is gonna be a shit show.” Daniel said. 

Vimini stepped back as the door opened again.

“Daniel! Vi!” Sandra exclaimed when she saw them, arms spread, radiating a sort of hyper filtered kindness.

Neither of them moved. 

“Come on, say hi to mom-” She cut off when saw me.

“Oliver,” Oliver’s wife Sandra, who was beautiful even nearing fifty and staring daggers at me said. “Who is this?”

“This is Elio.” Oliver said flatly. 

Oliver’s beautiful ex wife Sandra looked from him to me. She smiled with a sort of venom I had never expected to see. 

Vimini and Daniel were still motionless.

“So, you’re the famous Elio.” She snarled at me.

“Sandy-” Oliver tried. 

“Don't you ‘Sandy’ me you sick piece of shit. How dare you bring this sort of thing around my children-”

“It’s not like you’re around either.” Daniel said, just loud enough for her to hear.

“I’ve been protecting myself from this  _ insanit _ y-” She looked down her nose at him.

“Shut up.” Daniel said to her. “If you think he’s failing as a parent, what about you? Where have you been? On a month long self pity trip with your friends, bitching about your depressed husband leaving your children to fend for themselves.”

“Daniel don't talk to your mother like that.” Oliver put a hand on his shoulder.    
“Why not? She talks to us like that.” He shook Oliver off.

“Look at you!” Sandra cried at Oliver. “You’ve corrupted them all! Turned my own children against me! And you’ve brought your original corruptor to help you!” 

I was almost flattered to have such a superlative. I didn’t deserve it. 

“Just leave.” Daniel said to her. 

“Not until I get my things. Don't I at least have some say over my own possessions?”

“I can help.” I said. It was the first thing this outraged woman every heard me say. Even in the intense emotional turmoil, her pure instability intrigued me more than anything else. 

She tutted emphatically before stomping up the stairs in feigned triumph. 

The room behind her was silent. 

Daniel sat down hard in one of the kitchen chairs, making it squeak backwards. Vimini was staring at the floor. 

I looked at Oliver. He was unreadable.

I followed Sandra upstairs. May as well, if this was what felt like my last week on earth.

I walked up the stairs, finding his room’s door ajar, hearing Sandra mumble to herself. I walked in slowly, careful to make noise enough not surprise her. 

“Anything I can do to help?’ I asked, gesturing to the three small boxes with her name. I had seen and ignored them my first time up in his office.

“You can get the fuck away from my children.” Sandra said with unnerving calm, standing up, holding the boxes to her chest. 

“From context i'm sure you know I meant with your stuff.” I said dryly.

“Don’t need any more of my things corrupted, thanks.” She smiled. 

What a bitch.

“I think you’ll find, Sandra, that Oliver was corrupted long before I got to him.” 

“You think you’re some knight in shining armor, don't you?” She hissed at me. “Newsflash: there is no happy ending for people like  _ you _ . Oliver should have died in that fucking car crash. We’d all be better off.”

She walked past me, and back downstairs. As much bravado as I approached her with, I was more than a little shaken by that. There was no doubt she’d said things like that and worse to Oliver. Maybe even to her kids. Saying she was a bad mother was an understatement. Cruel as I ever thought myself to be, I was never the hateful sort of person Oliver had decided to marry. My dislike of her felt so justified, it almost dissipated. 

Soon she was back outside, kissing the still blotchy and unwilling Vinimi goodbye, slamming her trunk, and pulling out of the driveway.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.” Oliver said quietly to me when I returned downstairs. 

“You're apologizing to him?” Daniel rounded on Oliver. “Why not us? We have to see that shit regularly.”

“Daniel-” Oliver attempted to be stern. 

“Please stop yelling.” Vimni mumbled. 

“If dad just tried harder the yelling could end!” Daniel yelled again.

“Tried harder at what, Daniel?” Oliver asked.

“Everything! Standing up to her! Being a fucking father! Being alive!”

Vimini burst into tears and ran upstairs. 

Oliver sat down defeatedly at the table. In the past, I would have stayed to comfort him, but suddenly changed by only the past two weeks, I ran upstairs, after Vimini, leaving Daniel to slam the door on his way out of the house.

I slowed at the landing, locating the muffled crying with some difficulty. I knocked on a hall closet door where the noise proved to be most prominent. 

“Vimini?” I tried, knocking lightly on the door.

“Go away, Elio.” She hiccuped, muffled through the wood paneling.

“Baby _ , _ ” I crouched down, trying to soften my tone. “Can you open the door please?”

I heard reluctant sniffing. The door opened a crack.

“What do you want?” She said.

“I want to make sure you’re ok.” I said. 

“You don’t have to do that, you’re not my dad.”

“You’re right,” I said, remembering how I hated nothing more than being parented by strangers. “But I do care about you, and I would like to make sure you're ok.”

She pushed the door open further. ‘Why?”

I shrugged. “Just do.”

She scooted out to face me. “I’m not a baby.” She said sternly.

“It's a turn of phrase, calm down.”

She looked at me, still drying tears. Then she pushed her way into my lap, wrapping both arms around one of my own, pressing her forehead against my chest.

“I’m not ok.” she said into my shirt.

“That’s ok.” I said. 

Vi stayed leaning against my chest for some time. She was smaller than I would have expected, curled up as she was. She balled her fists in the fabric at my shoulder. I hugger her head with my free arm. I had never in my life held a child in such a way, and felt what I'm sure my mother did when I would cry as a child. Maybe what my father felt after he saw me so affected by Oliver’s first departure.

I hugged her tighter. The house was quiet

“Elio?”

“Yes, Vi?”

“Please don’t leave us.”

“Why would I, baby?”

“It’s like Daniel said. We’re a shit show.”

I laughed a little. 

“That's alright. It happens sometimes. Just, maybe don't use that phrase in front of your father.”

She tilted her head to look up at me. “Dad really cares about you.” She said.

“I know,” I sighed. “I care about him, too.”

I picked her up, still tight in my arms, and got her to bed. 

She asked me one more question.

“You’re dad died, right?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “He did.”

“Do you miss him?”

“All the time.” I picked a stray stuffed animal up off the floor. 

“Why did my dad want to die if he knew I would miss him?”   
“Maybe he thought it’d be better of he wasn't around.” I spoke as carefully as I could.

“Even if he’s sad, I like him being around. Better than mom, anyway.”

I wished her goodnight.

  
  



	11. Grow Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That fact that you, dear reader, don't know whats about to happen is killing me high key. Content warning? Maybe?? On the R end of PG-13. Also,  
> 1100 HITS HELL YEAH I LOVE YOU GUYS  
> \- Gogo

I got into the habit of pouring two drinks over those few weeks. I didn't particularly like the whiskey from the living room decanter, but I liked having an excuse to bring Oliver a drink, as if it was a normal thing for me to do for him. Everyone was asleep except for the two of us when I handed him one in the living room. He hesitated to take it and barely looked at me. Why did he never look at me? It should have been easy to just make eye contact on  _ occasion _ . 

He didn't take it. I set it down next to him. I stood next to the couch he slumped on. 

“I’m just trying to help.” I said neutrally. 

“I don't need your help.” 

I laughed slightly, I couldn't suppress it.

“What?”

“Nothing, sorry.”

We sat in silence.

I sighed very heavily “I really don’t want to do this again.”

“Do what again?” He seemed offended.

“I don’t want to have to try to talk to you while you're convincing yourself you don't want to talk to me. I’m the only other person in the fucking room right now.”

He didn’t respond.

“I am your friend, Oliver. I’ve considered myself your friend for a very long time.”

“Are you? Or are you trying to get something out of-”

“Oh, my- you always think that! You always think I’m trying to fuck you! Believe it or not, I am not trying to fuck you. I’m just trying to help because I care about you, alright?”

Again, nothing. We had been so close to something. Not even anything like before, just  _ something _ . And now he was reverting, like the cold light of day on an overcast evening.

For minutes that seemed like ages he said nothing, until I was seriously considering leaving.

“Why are you here?” He asked, staying me. 

I shrugged, exhausted. 

“You always do that. You always shrug. Why are you here?”

I sighed. I looked at the ground before looking back up. “You asked me to be.”

“Other than that.”

“I care about you.”

“You said that before. Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why’?”   
“I just want to know why. After how, just, shitty I was to you, you’re still here. We haven't really talked in years. This isn’t your problem and you took it up anyway and I have no idea what could have compelled you to do that.”

I didn’t know what to tell him. I didn’t know what he wanted to hear, what I could say, what I could do that could possibly begin to articulate why i had stayed. I knew it all and could grasp none of it.

“I read the letter you wrote me.” I looked him in the eye when I said that. I wanted to see how it would affect him. 

“I never should have written that.” 

Out of all the millions of possibilities I had thought out of things he would say, I hadn't thought of that. Perhaps it was too idealistic of me to think that he, of all people, would actually admit to my face how he felt. This was his chance. He knew this was his chance. Not even to have me again, but to just come clean. To say how he actually felt. And he didn’t take it.

I laughed out loud.

“What-” He sounded angry. With me. The actual bastard. 

“Of course.” I cut him off. I felt all the anger I’d ever had for him since day one bubble up in my throat. “Of course that's what you say. You actually get a chance to start over at life and you don't take it. You hide behind all the old excuses, pretend I never meant anything to you. I don’t know why I keep helping you. I don’t. I care about you, and I don’t know why. Because you’re absolutely right you've been complete shit to me. But this! This is it! This is rock fucking bottom. You can do whatever you want and  _ still _ you hide. Everyone that's going to leave you has left. You have nothing left to lose. I mean, Jesus, what are you so afraid of? The wrath of God? Grow up.”

He was silent for a bit. 

I always wanted to say that to him. 

_ Grow up. _

“You haven't left.” he said finally. 

“I know! Because I’m a fucking idiot!”

“You’re not an idiot.”

“Don’t. Ok?” I raised a hand. “Don’t.”

He wetted his lips, as if to speak, leaving me in begrudging anticipation for several seconds before he said, “I guess I’m afraid of the truth.”

“Everyone’s afraid of the truth, Oliver.” I said as scathingly as I could. 

“You’re not.”

“Of course I am.”

“What truth?”

“What do you think?” I’d be damned if I spilled my guts first. Again.

He was quiet again. I wondered vaguely if he would leave. I was wildly ambivalent. 

“You’re right,” he looked at me. “About the coma thing. My ‘parallel lives’ metaphor was shit.”

I nodded. I didn’t really know what else to do.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Elio-”

“Just tell me the truth.” I dropped my arms in exasperation. “Just tell me why you wrote the letter, and didn’t send it. And why you asked me to watch your kids.”

He hesitated

“What are you afraid of?” I asked the space between us.

I watched his chest rise as he took a breath.    
“I asked you to watch my kids because I wanted you to meet them. I’m proud of all of them. I wanted you to be, too.”

“And?”

“I’m…” He wouldn't look at me again. Why was it always like this? So close to everything out in the open and  _ still _ . 

“I’m afraid I've wasted my entire life with the wrong things. Wrong places. Wrong people. I was so afraid of doing it wrong, and now here I am.” He laughed a little then. “I wrote you the letter because I wanted you to know that I know now that I was wrong. I didn’t send it... because I didn't want it to be true.” He looked at me, then. I couldn’t be mad at him. I didn't see how I ever was. 

“I’m sorry.” He said. “It was unfair of me to ask you here.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.” I replied. 

He hesitated before speaking again.

“Do you like them? The kids?”

I looked sideways at him, surprised at how earnest he sounded. 

“Yeah. I do.”

He nodded, almost relieved.

“Why?” I asked. 

“I just hoped you would.”

Another pause of only a look. Looking and looking and looking and never touching.

“Are you still mad at me?” He asked.

“I probably should be.” I sat back down on the couch, locating my abandoned drink. “But I was never good at being mad at you.”

“How did you find the letter? Digging through my things again?” He sat down more carefully. I’m sure his joints still ached.   
“No. I found it by accident. I thought you had forgotten,” I admitted more quietly. 

“How could I? Possibly?”

“I don’t know.” I sighed. 

I watched him watching me briefly. I wondered if he would lead. He usually did, but this was all uncharted. 

“So?” 

“So what?” I would pull every true word from his lips no matter how excruciating the process was.

“If you read it, you must have… thoughts. I mean, you never stop thinking.”

Did he know me well enough to know this, was it so obvious? Or had he not stopped thinking in recent years, and knew now what torment it is to know everything and be sure of none of it?

“What do you want me to say?” I sighed, fell back against the couch, “That I never got over you? That a day hasn't gone by that i haven't thought of you? That no one has ever meant as much to be as you did? That i would do anything to have you back? Is that it?”  I said it without malice, without anything, really. I felt exhausted by all that i had kept at bay for so long. Exasperated by all the time pretending to have my shit together and move on. It seemed like a time to say it all, whether or not it was true anymore. Now or never. 

_ If not later, when? _

“Only if that were true.” He said.

“What?” Back to the confusing truth again.

“I would only want you to say that if it was true.” When I looked back at him he was staring at me. “If it was, maybe I wouldn’t be so alone anymore.” 

Nothing now stood between us but air.

Would it always have been this fucking easy? 

But scratch that this hadn’t been easy.

He tried to kill himself. The email was a shot in the dark. We didn't even know how to look at each other at first. Vinimi and Daniel had to love me. He had to let me help him, he had to get all his bullshit out of the way, but wasn’t it bullshit of me to stay without admitting to myself that of fucking course all of that was true. I wasn’t over him, like a petty phrase like that could describe it, and I never would be.

And I never really know what I want, unless it's like this. 

“Is it true?” Even as he asked, I’m sure he knew. He always knew.

_ Everyone’s afraid of the truth. _

“I…”

He closed the space between us. He tasted like bad alcohol, or tears, or hope, or mint. He tasted so familiar. It was nothing like either of the first kisses. It was careful, and genuine, and so desperate I wondered if this was what I had been like to him for a moment. 

When he pulled away his breath was hot again. Nothing about him was cold, or aging, or distant, or false. 

Maybe he really was better.

But what if I really had been doing this for myself? My subconscious plan all along, to be the savior, to claim a debt? An old and fading fear twisted in my stomach for a moment.

“You don’t have to-”

“I want to.” He whispered. 

I remembered a thought I hadn't had in twenty years: There is nothing like homecoming.

 

I think both of us were slightly afraid it wouldn’t be the same. Years stretched between us, and there was no seductive summer sun, no thrill of youth, only a quiet house in the snow of Cape Cod. And of course it wasn't the same, but it was like hearing a favorite song, long forgotten, and realizing you still know all the words. Wonderful, and relieving, and devastatingly familiar. Whatever we lacked in passion was made up for with practice. 

At first I tried to remind him his children were asleep in the house with us. He said that was one of the secrets of parenting. He kept stifling laughter. That is, until he was moaning his own name against the flat of my shoulder. His name as mine over and over and over. It was like electricity- better. Like life itself. Time may have still gone on but it meant nothing to us, to this. He remembered. If only I had known, for twenty years of looking for myself in other people that he still was me, was mine. He remembered. It must have been hours of this. I never wanted it to end. I told him that. 

“I never want this to end.” 

“Me neither.” 

I felt like I'd been half dead. I’d said that before, but I said it again. I was half dead, finally dying. He said he really had been dead, half joking, half utterly sincere. 

“I feel so alive with you.”

I had forgotten myself in him again. Finally. Like my skin could melt off. Some great pressure lifted from every fiber of my being. For a moment I thought he might cry, or that it was me crying, and I kissed him for the millionth time as hard as I could. Everything was salt. 

Destroyed as I felt, never again did I feel guilty, or cold, or sick. Not even once. I only felt relieved. Infinitely relieved that he had stayed as stuck as I was, had never really gotten over it, had been in as much pain as me the whole time, maybe more. The idea that he needed me - specifically me - to soothe that pain was more than I could bare, and what fueled a lot of the more viscous exchanges until I might have passed out on top of him, with him inside me. 

“I missed you, did I tell you that?” He held my neck.

“You did.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

I don’t really remember falling asleep, only that I never lost the feeling of his skin against mine until then.

But I woke up alone...


	12. Once in a Lifetime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't listened to Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads yet you should give it a listen! The plot of this fic is heavily based on the lyrics and it was the first Talking Heads song my dad ever played for me when I was little so it's very near and dear to my heart.  
> THANK YOU FOR 100 KUDOS AAAAAAA I feel so cool you guys and its all thanks to you. Im probably going to post the last chapter (which is more of an epilogue) tomorrow right before I graduate high school forever! so this is a little milestone for me and I want to thank you guys for sticking around to read this baby! Poured my heart and soul and a lot of THC into it.  
> All my love,  
> Gogo

I wanted to wake up with the weight of him nearby. With his breath on my neck, steady and slow, or his arm across my chest. Just something. But I woke up alone. I curled my fingers in the cold sheets beside me, unmoving. I rolled sideways, nose pressed against my pillow, and tried to breath his smell and nothing else, in case I never got this close to it again. I smoothed my own hand over my chest and hoped he hadn't changed his mind. Please dear god let him not have changed his mind. I was so close. So painfully close. I thought this was all I wanted, this was all I needed, this one night with him again, but no. Of course not. Of course I knew now I needed him more than I would ever need anything else and how small all the rest of my life seemed in comparison. I felt like I’d been waiting for this longer than I could even remember, a feeling like this.

Please don't take it away. 

I got dressed, and realized with a sort of bruised glee that every piece of my clothing was in a different obscure location around the room. It was early. The sun was barely blushing the edge of the sky. And everything was cold. Summer mornings in B. meant at least a promise of heat later in the day, no matter how cold it was in the early morning. It was just cold here. 

I realized if I wanted to shower I would have to go back to my apartment, which was daunting. Creating any space between us seemed deeply wrong. But he was already doing that again.

I found him, downstairs, drinking coffee on the couch. 

“How long have you been up?” I asked, hoping it was all fine. 

I could have swooned if I was that sort of person when he turned around. He had showered, his hair was slicked back. What a moviestar. I wanted to feel the sheen of damp hair between my fingers, to taste the bitterness of his new cologne against his neck, like last night. 

But he was so far away.

“Not long.” He said shortly.

I wanted nothing more than to hold him, or him to hold me, again, for however long it took for him to be better; forever.

But he wouldn't let me closer than that.

“Is everything-”

“Later.” He said, standing and walking past me. “Let’s talk later.”

There it was. Icy blue and ringing in my ears for hours even though he barely whispered it. Just the way I had always dreaded to hear it. The later that meant never. 

No when, no now, just never.

Must everything repeat itself in never ending, sisyphean circles again and again and again until one of us really died? Would this haunt me till death? Would it haunt him? We were cursed to never again find the right place at the right time with the right version of the other person, just to look back forever on the once.

 

I took Vimini and Daniel, for the last time, to school. 

Oliver said he was busy when I asked if I should come back.

 

I wished I could talk to my father.

 

I was so fucking close. I couldn't let him get away now. But it was out of my control. Always out of my control. 

And of course, like the lovesick creature that I am, I took a shower and tried not to cry like the child I wasn't. I wasn't a child. I had years of existence behind me, and this one moment in time that would follow me forever.

I tried to call Marzia but she didn't pick up again. 

The shower I took was quick as I could manage, tired as I was, so thoughts I didn't want to think would have no chance. 

I thought about going out. I was too exhausted. 

I was due to leave in a couple of days. 

This might be it. He could be better without me, eventually. I could be better without him. The last, amicable, tragic goodbye.

I remembered the last box of things other than basics that sat in my bedroom. If I was saying goodbye, and meant it, I had something to return. 

Pulling the box open and digging through it just a little, I found, carefully placed at the bottom, Oliver’s shirt. Billowy. Still sealed away, still perfect, still mine. But if I was leaving for good, I had to at least try to let go. 

Just the idea of giving it back felt like tearing my heart out all over again. Just as painful as before, but now I was the one leaving.

I couldn't think about it past taking it out, so I left it on on my bed, and began rifling through the last of the paraphernalia absently. Books, a college notebook with juvenile, original piano pieces, a picture of Marzia and I in Germany, her laughing as I carried her piggyback, and a 45 I didn’t remember. I slid it out of the paper sleeve and read the inside ring of the B side.

_ Once in a Lifetime _

_ The Talking Heads _

Almost instantly, I thought I should give it to Vimini. 

I hardly played it anymore, it just sat in this odds and ends and vitals box collecting dust. She loved music already, I could tell. Daniel wouldn’t mind getting nothing, he told me he hated gifts that weren't money. Very practical. 

I didn’t want to say goodbye to the two of them. I didn’t want them to think adults could just go in and out of their lives as they pleased. And nothing was complicated between us. I was merely an available adult, close enough to trust with the little trials and tribulations of being a child. 

Vimini had cut her finger yesterday, in the midst of doing inane craft-based homework, and started crying. She ran to me, rather than Oliver. Maybe just because I was closer, but I felt, for that moment, special. Telling her it was alright, she was alright, it wasn't that bad. I could help.

She clung to my sleeve. 

Maybe, thoughtless as I am with my peers, selfish as I am with myself, I could be a good person, if she thought i was. 

I wrote on the record sleeve:

 

_ Vimini- _

_ The B side of this was one of my favorite songs when I was a teenager that wasn't ancient classical music. If it skips, which it might, stack pennies on the needle of the player. You might not love it now, but give it a listen sometime. Until we meet again. _

_ \- Elio _

 

I sat back, re-reading what I had written. Good. It was good, and hopefully kind. 

I’d take it by later. 

I’d leave in two days. 

I might never come back.

I could hear laughter sifting down through the ceiling. My neighbors living the life.

 

I fell asleep on the solitary loveseat, nothing to do but think and remember. I hadn’t really slept more than a few hours last night. How wonderful that would have been if the morning had met us differently. 

I nodded off in the warm light on the window, staving off despair, thinking maybe sleep would help.

 

I woke up to the doorbell. Buzzing over and over and over. I immediately knew who I hoped it was. It could be. Was it? 

Launching myself shamelessly across the room, nearly tripping over my abandoned shoes, I threw the door open. 

Oliver, with snow on his shoulders, was looking at me in a way I had only ever seen once; when I met him at the post office, when we just wanted to be together. 

“Is later now?” I said, giving up entirely on avoiding it.

“Can I come in?”

I let him in. 

He stood awkwardly beside the piano, looking at it slightly longer than he usually would. I stood near enough.

“Well?” I prompted.

He looked wrecked, nervous and dying.

“I can’t help but feeling like I've… relapsed.” He said finally.

“Jesus you’re so dramatic.”

“I’m serious, I’ve been trying so hard to-”

“And where has that got you?” I asked flatly. A reasonable response to whatever he could say.

He was silent for a while. I thought i had overstepped, maybe really and truly ended it right there. 

“For as long as I can remember,” He started, sitting tentatively on the piano bench. “I’ve been at war with myself, torn between what I should do and what I want to be doing. And it always comes back to you. Every fucking time it’s you. I feel like I shouldn’t, and I didn’t. I went home. I didn’t keep in touch more than absolutely necessary. And still. It’s like a disease. I’m old enough now that I  _ feel _ old. And it was one summer what feels like a lifetime ago. It’s cruel.”

He looked at me, hurt. By me? By my being here?

“It’s not your fault, though.” He looked away again. 

I could feel my heart in my throat. That’s what it was - cruel. And it was my fault, just as much as it was his, because neither of us had done anything about it. Not let go, moved on, and not called, not sent for the other, not rendezvous anywhere to meet and… and…

What would I have done? Run away with him? Would he have with me? 

Likely, no. 

It struck me again that he really tried to kill himself. This all could have gone differently. A different email, or different phone call. I’d thought about him dead so many times, but never at his own hands. I wanted to torment him just the way I had, but even more I wanted him to be happy. I had nothing I wanted.

“It’s not yours, either.” I said carefully. 

Something left to fester so long on its own was capable of destroying a person. 

“I want to be that person. To do what I want. I want to stop feeling like I owe something to somebody. I’m just… scared.”

The desire to comfort him welled up within me.

I stood back up, walking towards him carefully, as if I were afraid he would leave. Just the same as before.

I sat next to him on the piano bench, looking across my shoulder at him, still in his coat. I pushed my shoulder against his as i said,

“It’s ok to be scared.”

Much to my surprise, he smiled. Still sad, still tragic, but smiling again.

He pushed back against my shoulder. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“You know I would have gone to lunch with you even if I had no favor to ask. I was just trying to come up with more excuses to see you.” he admitted.

It was like a blooming in my hands, my feet, like all hope restored. 

He wanted to see me.

He wanted to see me.

He wanted my help, and my help alone.

He wanted my advice, my input, me. 

And he knew just what i was thinking about, still, after all this time. 

He knew I loved being predicted. So few could do it. 

“Thank you.” I almost whispered. 

He studied me for a moment.

He shifted closer, and I thought maybe he’d kiss me again, but he leaned his head into the crook of my shoulder and sighed, like all the weight could finally be let go. It seemed natural to hold him against my shoulder, my chest, to run my fingers through his hair and listen to him breath. It felt natural. 

This was a new intimacy I never thought I would get to have.

“Please don’t leave.” Oliver said, with no confidence at all. “I don’t think I can do this without you.”

He said to me the one thing I had wished I’d begged of him a million times, if only for the sentiment.

Please don't leave, please don't go away, don't leave me stranded in my own home, don't leave me lost in my own town, don't leave me. I don’t know who I am without you and I don’t want to. 

I had tried to be someone without him. He had tried to be someone without me. It worked, too. We had our names on objects and in reference lists and on shelves, in contact books, in dedications. But I had no idea who that man in those books was. I had lived a life parallel to my own, without him. And now, here he was. I could live again. If only...

_ Please don’t leave. _

I didn’t respond right away, and I could feel the tension in his shoulders. Even as he sat up I let my hands drag along hs skin until they dropped away.

“It’s unfair of me to ask,” I could see him backtracking. “I know you have a life in Italy and- and family and friends. I just- no, I shouldn't have said anything. I shouldn’t assume...”

“Assume what?” I probably should have been offended.

He hesitated. “Assume,” He gestured vaguely at around the room, at himself. “That _this,_ that last night _,_ means anything to you.”

“This means everything to me.”

He looked at me, and finally he wasn’t avoiding my gaze. I felt older than him again, like I had the upper hand, like what taking someone’s virginity feels like only after, when they ask you what in the world, what in the name of god does it mean?

When he cleared his throat I could tell he was trying not to cry. I wanted so badly to protect him from the world, let him be mine, let him be safe from the guilt that haunted him day and night. Let him forever be safe in my arms. 

He nodded a couple of times. 

“Is it to much to ask for you to stay?” 

“I’ll stay as long as you want me to.” I said easily.

Anything he wanted. The only way I had ever done anything.

“And you’re not just saying that because you know I want you to?” He half teased

“Not everything is about you.” 

“You might never leave, you know.” He smiled, swallowing back whatever emotion might have escaped. “I can’t imagine I’ll stop wanting you around.”


	13. And Just Once More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all the return readers for taking this journey with me. I am ridiculously grateful. I love you all so much.   
> Might fuck around and write a wedding for these boys. Lmk in the comments if you want me to finish that.   
> All my love,  
> Gogo

I told him how much I had wanted to hold him close to me again, that one day near Christmas, a few months after summer. I told him that as he loosely held my arm across his chest, legs tangled with mine.  Both of us admitted how entirely exhausted we were, fucking all night being a young man’s game. I suggested a nap. After standing up, he asked for a tour. I could tell he was teasing, I teased back, gesturing from where I was to the various designated areas that comprised any studio apartment. And one bedroom. He walked there, i followed him, and while talking, i realized neither of us had ever been in a place together without a sense of urgency. Always with impending doom, never alone in an empty apartment in the middle of the day, with no real time limit. Because really, if I stayed, the days would stretch out before us, and really, wasn't that a new brand of terrifying?

He stopped short in the doorway. He looked over his shoulder at me, beaming, smug as ever, just the same and all different and perfect. 

“Is that my shirt?”

I was at once embarrassed, thrilled, anticipatory, and had no idea what he was thinking.

He walked to my bed to pick it up, unfolding it, holding it up in grey sunlight.

“This is my shirt.”

“If memory serves, it’s mine now.” I said, with nothing else to say.

“Oh, it’s yours now?” He laughed, felling the fabric in his fingers. “It doesn't even smell like you.” He looked at me “Why is it out?”

The ecstatic memory crumpled. 

“I was going to give it back.” 

The smile vanished from his face.

“Why would you…?”

“I thought you wanted me to leave, I thought-”

He grabbed my arm, pulling me toward him, the fabric of the shirt between us.

“Never give it back.”

A strange combination of platonic and greedy intimacy overtook me, and I leaned my full frame against his, weight after weight falling away from me.

It was strange, to lay in bed, fully clothed, so close, so easily, with him. It was wonderful. It was everything I ever wanted and more. And it was so very little.

He traced my jawline with his fingertips.

“You shaved.”

“Vimini asked me to.”

He laughed. 

“You look younger.”

“You don’t age,” I countered.

“I’ve aged,” He argued. “I’d like to think I’ve gained some wisdom.”

“You always liked to think that.”

I listened to him breathe. I flattened my hand against his chest just to watch it rise and fall. He pushed my hair out of my face just to look at me.

“You didn't even touch me,” I started, still reeling that he was just there. “When you came back for Christmas. You came to our room. You just looked at me.”

“I thought I shouldn’t. Maybe it would have upset you.” He thought as he spoke.

“You should have. I wouldn't have been upset.” 

“Wouldn't you just have missed me more?” He looked almost as if he was asking himself the question.

“I’ll always miss you when you’re not around.”

The sleeve of his shirt traced the edge of my jaw as he lifted a hand to my face. He dragged his fingertips across my cheekbones, my brow, studying my skull almost. I wondered if he had ever thought about me dead.

“‘Our room’?” Oliver said coyly.

“Is that not-”

“No, no no. You’re right. It’s just nice to hear.”

I was just near to falling asleep when I awoke suddenly.

“Do you want my piano?” I said to the no-longer half asleep Oliver.

“What?” He laughed.

“My lease ends in January and I can’t take the piano back with me as of now.”

“Do I want it?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re the musician.” He leant his head against my shoulder again. 

“I thought, maybe…” I took a breath. “It could just stay with you.”

He knew what i was asking, what i was talking about. If i was at his house, i’d need something to work with. If it was with him, Id have to come back.

“Sure.” I could hear him smiling, feel his breath on my skin. “It can stay with me.”

 

We only hardly fell asleep again before we had to leave if we had any hope of getting the kids on time. Oliver pointed out I kept saying “the kids” not his kids. He kept smiling at me. It was hard to drive, drawn as i was to the warmth of having someone smile so continually at me. 

We had never picked them up together, the both of us. It was so deeply domestic, it would have bothered me if it wasn't him.

“Oh cool, you're both here.” Daniel remarked, barely looking up from his phone keyboard.

Oliver asked if they wanted to go out for inner, celebrate the first day of winter break. Daniel had plans. Well what about tomorrow night?

Vimini stared at me, for maybe a full minute. She had a peculiar way of demanding eye contact.

“I thought Elio was leaving.” She observed.

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m staying for a bit longer.”

“Gee, wonder why,” Daniel snorted. 

Daniel was smarter than anyone gave him credit for.

“Daniel, don’t be flippant-” Oliver started.

“Dad, can you just like- we know you and Elio got back together. Like, great. Good for you-”

“Don't you have to get divorced first?” Vimini aksed.

“They can do that easy.” Daniel told her. 

“Can they get married here?”

“I think, yeah.” Daniel looked at me. “Can you get married?”   
“As of 2004, I believe.” I said as casually as I could.

“No one’s getting married-” Oliver tried again

“I think you should.” Vimini leaned forward to grab her father’s sleeve. “I really like him, Dad.”

“We should ask Michael.” Daniel said to Vimini.

“Michel started it.”

“But we have-”   
“Ok, no more talk-” I truly believe Oliver’s children were unaware of interrupting as a concept. 

“Are you in love?” Vimini asked before Oliver banned discussion altogether and Daniel leaned into the front seat to dig through a stack of CDs.

 

He apologised to me later. 

“I think you mind your children more than I do.” I laughed. 

“I just don’t want you to be, i don't know, scared off.”

“You couldn't scare me off if you tried.”

He smiled, quietly. 

I realized i wasn't afraid at all anymore. I don't think he was either.

 

I called Marzia when I again found myself alone,bit less lonely than i could ever recall being.

“I can’t come home right away.” I started.

“Oh?” She sounded preemptively scandalized. “And why is that?”

“I’ve been invited to stay for longer with Oliver-”

“At his HOUSE?”

“I still have my apartment but, you know, Maybe, at his house, but I’ll be home for new years-”

“Elio what did you do?”

“It’s not what you think-”

“Oh my god you slept together again. Again! When i specifically told you not-”

“I think he might want to get back together.” I said rapidly.

“Like, together together?” She asked after a pause. “Like a couple? Like dinner dates and grocery shopping?”

“Yes, all of those things.”

“But- but you have a life, and a career, and-”

“I can split my time.” I said with more confidence than i actually possessed.

Marzia was silent for a bit. I realized I actually cared what she thought which was a sort of needed dependance we hadn't had when we were younger. Maybe it’s nice to trust people/

“Elio, that’s- that’s kind of wonderful,” I was relieved to hear her sincerity “I never thought…”

“Me either.”

“If you’re not coming home,” Marzia started. She was already back in B with her parents. “You know, you’ll have to tell your mother why.”

“I know.”

“She’ll take it well, just. Are you sure he means it?”

I pressed my lips together briefly before responding. “I’m sure.”

“Do you want me to visit? Maybe your mother, too?”

“I’ll come visit. I’ll bring him.”

 

When my mother picked up the phone I knew exactly what to say.

“ _Mamon_ , you'll never believe who’s with me right now.” I looked up at Oliver, suppressing an almost conspiracy smile, across the couch from me. 

That was what she always said to me: “You’ll never believe.”

She guessed easily. She asked how he was, and he was doing well. Much better since I last saw him, and yes, he was just the same. I was fine, good actually. Yes, America was classless and pretty. I was so terribly sorry to disappoint, but I couldn’t come home yet. Why? I had been invited to stay. Yes, with Oliver. Yes. I think so. 

I could hear her smiling through the phone. 

“Take your time, Elio.”

But bring him to visit me soon, ok?

Bring his little ones.

 

I don’t think I’ve ever thought that I should be happy. I’ve wanted to be, I've tried to be, and at times I thought I deserved it, but it never seemed like something that would happen, or that was normal course for my life. 

I’d been happy fleetingly. I’d been happy for months on end, ever aware that it would end soon. 

But the kind of staying happiness I had just even a few weeks into Oliver asking me to stay was something so sustaining and easy I never thought in my life I would find something like it. Going away presents turned into Christmas presents. I had my own hook on the wall for keys. I had a toothbrush in the master bathroom. Vimini lost her water bottle and found it again in my car. The piano was moved from my apartment to his living room. 

I stayed. 

I was still due to visit my mother in a few days when Oliver asked me - with laughable officiality - if I would like to move in. 

“Aren’t I already?”

“Not officially.”

“It’s not like I’d stay anywhere else when I get back.”

He leaned his head towards mine, amicable, serious. “I just want this to feel like a home to you, too.”

“This place? Never.” I teased. “You should move.”

I avoided a real answer for as long as possible, still disbelieving. It became ridiculous to refuse eventually, insisting that I didn’t live with them when every night and meal was spent there. 

We moved in spring. Not far, just a different house in the same town because everyone wanted to get away from the white washed box in the middle of nowhere full of bad memories. 

Vimini had the time of her life moving houses. Everything was new and exciting to her at that age. It has been her whole life. 

Oliver pinned up the postcard of the berm in what he made a point of calling “our room.” He relished the new office space as well, preparing for the coming year for which he could work again. 

But both of us still had the summer free. 

 

Children, I completely forgot, go to summer camps. The house was totally empty for a week in the middle of June except for the two of us. Even up until that point, I think we were holding back a bit. With kids and change and our lives to be managed we held back until summer. Marital bliss, or any equivalent, always sounded tame to me but whatever we were making of the pretty idea was utter carnage. Looking back, I think all the pent up withdrawal took over, and in the process destroyed any notion that the two of us together were any less debauched than before. It felt like being young again in a seasoned, stable way, with one notable difference: we could wake up together, and stay together, walking about the house in next to nothing, eating, drinking, talking, laughing, listening to music, making up for the million years we had been apart a million times over. A honeymoon period. 

I was completely wasted late one night, and recalled one of the few thoughts I had that I kept from Oliver all this time. 

The daydream of us, in a house like this, with alcohol like this, and a life like this of just being together. A foolish daydream of a child who has never been in love before. Maybe when you’ve never done something before you’re ideas are less compromised by reality. But I would have wanted that at any age. I would have given up so much to get to where I was now, at any given time in my life. 

And now I had it. 

I had everything I wanted. 

Not in the way I thought I would get it, and not the exact life I thought I would have, but I wanted it. It’s nice to have what you want. 


End file.
